London Wants To Offer Full WiFi Coverage... But How Will That Work With The Digital Economy Act?

from the questions... dept

Rik was the first of a few of you to send in the news that the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is claiming that London will be fully covered by WiFi in time for the 2012 Olympic games. Of course, considering that the UK Parliament just passed the Digital Economy Act, which calls for carefully limiting access to the internet for people accused (not convicted) of infringement online, it makes you wonder how that's going to work. Even if Ofcom has said that the DEA rules won't initially apply to wireless providers, it does seem a bit odd to have the government offering a service like this. Once again, we're seeing how the government has these two competing issues that don't play well together: getting more broadband availability, while looking to help out the entertainment industry by kicking people off the internet at the same time. Who will be the first Olympic athlete kicked offline for downloading some music during the games?

New Governement

Ah well let us not forget that since the Digital Economy Bill was rush through Parliment we have had a change in Government in the UK. So we have a rushed through bill that was provided by one party and we now have a Government of their opposition (which is Boris's party as well).

i have to laugh. as is pretty normal, mike, you forget the simple concept: access control. wifi doesnt mean entirely open access, it could still require that users log in to access the network. further, i have to laugh even more, because city wide wifi has been tried and pretty much discarded in the past, and i seem to remember some tech guru mocking the efforts. but hey, dont let that get in the way of slamming the uk some more.

Re: Re:

not really. most major airports have wireless hotspots that are paid, it wouldnt be really far off to say that users would be required to actually sign up for service, and perhaps they could log mac addresses and such to see who is using what. that would satisfy the (somewhat pointless) urge for free while also providing some sense of responsilbity.